Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot

Preview

Snake is back again

Who Controls the Past now... Controls the Future

There are very few series in video games that get the entire industry excited when they are released. Names that are synonymous with the entire industry, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, and Halo are such games, to name a few. Another series of games that has been pivotal to Sony’s successes and is given the vast honour of joining the above-mentioned games is that of Metal Gear Solid. The release of these high profile games is usually met with vast amounts of hype and clamour from fans and, more often than not, these games deliver on the expectations. This is really what makes them so special.

Coming this spring is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, possibly the final game in the series created by legendary director Hideo Kojima. This game is also a Playstation 3 exclusive, making it perhaps the most important game for Sony in this current console generation. For those of you out there reading this who are not excited about this game, you may just want to hang your controllers up right now, because it doesn’t get much bigger than this.

Who Controls the Future now... Controls the Past

The Metal Gear series has been around for quite a while now, dating all the way back to the original Metal Gear for the NES which was released in 1987. The series has always been about stealth - it was one of the first games to incorporate it into the gameplay and then perfect it years later. But now, twenty years later, we find ourselves not just dealing with an amazing stealth game, but a game that has been telling a very sophisticated story for the past twenty years. The series thus far has revolved around Metal Gear, a machine that is capable of firing nuclear weapons to rage havoc on the world, and the legendary hero Snake who is sent in to stop this from happening. Throw in a good dose of Cold War history, mixed with genetic engineering and some of the most memorable characters and bosses of any other series out there, and you’ve got the series in a nutshell.

Spoiler for Metal Gear newbies

First, for those who have not played the previous games of the series or read about them, you may want to stop reading now as I cannot bring you up to speed on what Metal Gear Solid 4’s story is about without giving away a few things first. Without giving too much away... the few tidbits that you will need to know are as follows:

1. Solid Snake is actually genetically engineered from the DNA of the hero in Metal Gear Solid 3: Big Boss.
2. Snake’s enemy in this game appears to be Liquid Snake (his brother made from the same DNA and the bad guy from Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2.
3. Liquid Snake is actually controlling another long-standing character from the series named Ocelot through his arm.
4. Because of the genetics, Solid Snake's body is ageing rapidly.

So with all that said and done, enter an old looking Solid Snake, called in for one last time to stop the evil Liquid Snake who has amassed armies of soldiers to fight his war against the world.